My Dream Day With Gronk
One man party Rob Gronkowski has become a bona fide cultural force. Maxim asks four writers about their dream day with Gronk, the Patriots tight end of our fantasies.
We have achieved peak Gronk. After torching the Ravens last weekend, it’s looking like Rob Gronkowski might be driving his party bus (yes, he has a party bus) straight to the Super Bowl. Maxim asked four writers to tell us about their dream day with Gronk, where he’s down for absolutely anything (which we’re pretty sure he is).
Beejoli Shah‘s Dream Day With Gronk
While tying him to my bed with his Patriots towel for 24 hours of blitzing sounds like a great day, my stamina is closer to that of an Oakland Raider and you don’t waste a day with Gronk boning for 1 hour and watching the Gilmore Girls banter at warp speed for the other 23. What would I do? Easy – Beer Olympics. What is Gronk’s life (or my own, really) without idiotic competition? Bring on the flip cup, rage cage, Beirut (beer pong is for pussies, plus we can use that paddle later, ya know?), and an entire NFL season’s salary in quarters. After that, and don’t ask me how I know this, there’s a certain joyful club drug you can mix with hash that those in the know like to refer to as rainbow shitbombs. Turns out they pair extremely well with an hour spent staring at the changing neon lights of deli signs, and if I know Gronk, that’s the type of art he’s going to enjoy. Provided we survive all that, we can default to the standard thing you do when you have Gronk alone: Gilmore Girls, obviously.
Andrew Burmon‘s Dream Day With Gronk
Rob picks me up at noon. He’s hungover, but he’s got a sense of humor about it. He apologizes for his sweatpants, which are elastic, and the state of his shirt, which he bought at a Mighty Mighty Bosstones concert in 1999 and has slept in ever since. He’s wearing his Super Bowl ring and has some confetti stuck in his hair. We drive to the closest Dunkin’ Donuts and order two dozen Boston Cremes. We eat three a piece and give the rest to the dozen rescue dogs wearing canine jerseys and dozing in the back of the bus. Gronk speeds down Route. 1 toward 128, but swerves into the parking lot at Golf of the Village Green, a colonial-themed putt-putt establishment. Gronk is terrible at golf, but he high fives me after every hole and, at the end, buys me an ice cream. Afterwards, we head into Boston and go the aquarium, where Gronk convinces a vet tech to let him wrestle a sea lion. Gronk wins. He and the sea lion high five. For dinner, we head to Durgin Park, where Gronk orders the Yankee cut and flirts with the waitress. I can tell he’s being friendly for her sake – his attention is laser-focused on me. On our way to his place after dinner, we spend a half an hour talking about how Jim Rice should be in the Hall of Fame. Gronk knows a lot about baseball. He also admits that he and Elizabeth Warren have an ongoing email correspondence. We’re both tired, so we opt to watch “Four Days in October” on his couch instead of playing catch, which Gronk is totally up for. Gronk has Sam Adams (Winter Lager) on tap and a Chuck Close portrait of Bill Belichick on the wall. When I spill beer on myself, he offers me one of his uniforms. I wake up in it the next morning, surrounded by the rescue dogs. We’re all wearing the same thing and so is Gronk, who is headed to Gillette Stadium. “I’ve got to destroy the Giants,” he says, high-fiving me. “But I made tacos for breakfast. They’re in the fridge next to the live lobsters.” The tacos are delicious. The dogs love them. We all high five.
Max Rivlin-Nadler‘s Dream Day With Gronk
Gronk pulls up in his party bus in front of my apartment early in the morning, waking me up by honking (gronking!) his horn, which is actually an acapella version of Cuffin’ Season by Fabolous. He explains to me that he’s putting off his womanizing for the day and instead is completely devoted to bro-time. We celebrate this by going to a diner and I watch him eat three pounds of bacon in ten minutes. He then complains he’s still hungry, and we laugh about it. We pop some molly and head over to a local laser tag arena, where we completely own because I stand on his shoulders while shooting down at the plebes below. We then go to a football field where I throw touchdowns to him, and after every touchdown he shotguns a natty lite. I throw him fifty touchdowns. Then we set off $2500 worth of fireworks that he bought in New Hampshire as he constantly Gronk spikes in the smoke. I then offer to play a game where he hides in the woods and I have six hours to find him. Then, if I haven’t found him for six hours, he’s allowed to find me. I search, but Gronk has hidden himself well. It gets darker. The clock is ticking. This was a terrible idea. I hide behind a rock as the night grows dark and still. Every sound I think it might be Gronk, but as the sky begins to lighten, I see the party bus in the distance. I make a break for it, but it’s too late. Just a low scream off “Groooonk” is the last thing I hear before….. before…. I’d rather not talk about the rest. More like a nightmare than a dream, to be honest.
D. Backer’s Dream Day With Gronk
After quickly establishing that we have nothing in common, and 24 hours might turn out to be a burden with this man, we’d set out to make ourselves unwelcome in any genteel company we could find. Gronk prompting booksellers for The Art of Sex by Robert Gronkowski; Gronk wondering how quickly he’d have to eat a prix fixe for the meal to be free; Gronk at a gallery opening explaining how he earned the nickname “Gronk.” Throughout the day he’d be stopping to flash his patented “face of shit eating” smile, fans neatly tucked under each arm for the improbable photo, and all the while I’d be watching, considering, learning how to get out of my own fucking head…then the club…then the sex…then the letting go.
Photos by Joe Robbins / Getty Images
Read This Next
